#dynasty warriors transcribed | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

teratocrat · 2 years ago

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firefox tabs i have open:

tumblr

tumblr notes

one of my mutuals' blog archive4

my own blog archive

five posts ive reblogged

google image search for 'aardwolf'

a tumblr devoted to j.c. leyendecker

a post from 2017 on my old blog about a stand i made (my friend wanted fanstands to try drawing)

five e621 tabs

an ultima iv-v-vi screenshot lp

"morrowind: an oral history" from polygon

online minesweeper site

online solitaire site

wikipedia page for "Aeon"

wikipedia page for "Young's Literal Translation"

wikipedia page for "Chicxulub crater"

wikipedia page for "Axis mundi"

wikipedia page for "Mount Rainier"

itch.io

sword interval

scryfall search "type:dragon"

scrayfall "Ambitious Dragonborn"

mychart login

http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/e4129.html

google spreadsheet i made to keep track of silly names i made up in case i wanted to name characters in anything

menu for a local teriyaki restaurant

gmail

anime streaming site tabs for Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke

cohost

cohost notes

Just King Things episode on The Waste Lands

Just King Things episode on The Tommyknockers

wiktionary page for "audient"

wikipedia page for "Banana"

wikipedia page for "Robert W. Service

wikipedia page for "Li (unit)"

wikipedia page for "Invertebrate iridescent virus 31"

GameFAQs walkthrough and map for Dragon Warrior for the NES

twitter

twitter notes

metropolitan museum of art page on some Qing dynasty agate pomegranates

wikipedia page for "William Howard Taft"

wikipedia page for "Wig"

wikipedia page for "Egyptian cuisine"

google doc where i was trying to transcribe every JKT five-sentence summary

Kill Six Billion Demons KSBD 2-27

Kill Six Billion Demons Breaker of Infinities 4-181

letterboxd

The New Whirling School: An annotated analysis of Sermon 01

youtube subscriptions

youtube Deadmau5 - Ghosts n Stuff

youtube Ranged Touch's 2021 Dark Souls 2 charity livestream part 1

youtube Ranged Touch's 2020 Morrowind charity livestream part 1

youtube Northernlion playing Slice and Dice

youtube Vangelis - Blade Runner Blues

youtube Lady Gaga - Just Dance

youtube Northernlion playing Enter the Gungeon

youtube The Killers - Human

youtube Kanye West - Flashing Lights

manga site for Berserk and Blame!

nine tabs of the Terraria wiki

wikipedia page for "Etruscan civilization"

google search for "forestall"

wikipedia page for "Ran (film)

scryfall search "type:goblin color>=b"

wikipedia page for "Gisella Perl"

wikipedia page for "Overtone singing"

wikipedia page for "Muezzin"

About Us page for Gay City: Seattle's LGBTQ Center

an entirely unused new tab

"An Unknown Kid on Halloween"

uquiz results for "what's your job after the apocalypse"

wikipedia page for "Barnacle goose myth"

wikipedia page for "Vegetable Lamb of Tartary"

rom site

what happens next

youtube William Wegman - Alphabet Soup

events page for a seattle comics & games shop

youtube Ode to Physical Pain

google search for "hyperobject"

prisoncensorship's review of Fallouts 1 & 2

picture i took of the inside of that same comics & games shop

wikipedia page for "Infliximab"

chart showing the evolutionary tree of polearms over time

another mutual's reblogged post

two tabs of the menu of a local pastrami shop

pdf of the third edition monster manual

wikipedia page for "Forgotten Realms"

picture i took of my own backyard covered in snow

scryfall search "set:clb t:dragon is:firstprint"

scryfall search "set"afr t:dragon"

three tabs of file directory for some tabletop pdfs

wikipedia page for "First Blood"

youtube King Missile - Open

someone's website about cat colorations and fur patterns

image a friend sent me of the chapter list of the novel she's writing

Gita Jackson's article comparing Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld

download page for the roguelike "Infra Arcana"

youtube Richard Dawson - Ogre

youtube Every Enemy in Dark Souls RATED - 1 - Undead Asylum

an Exalted 2e homebrew Hegra charmset

a friend's twitter

bilibili video for known Genshin Impact character Xiao

google doc of the rules for a discord server im in

i know i have way too many tabs open please dont yell at me

#everything past the big chunk of youtube videos is basically unknown territory for me im going to close a bunch of these right after this

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hatboxghosty · 2 years ago

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Communicating solely through badly transcribed dynasty warriors screenshots

#kc calls

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Mulan And The Chinese Women Warriors of History and Legend

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While American audiences know the story of Mulan through the 1998 animated Disney film and the upcoming live-action reboot, they may not know that the films are based on a Chinese legend. Hua Mulan is a legendary figure whose story was first told in “Ballad of Mulan,” a folksong first transcribed in the 6th century. In the legend, Mulan is a girl who disguises herself as a man and goes to war in place of her father. Mulan fights for many years as part of the army and, after earning much honor and gifts from the emperor, returns home to her family. Only then does she reveal her gender identity.

While Mulan may be the most familiar of woman Chinese warriors (at least to American audiences), she’s only one in a rich history of historical and legendary female heroes in Chinese history. With the live-action adaptation of Mulan releasing on Disney+ this Friday, here are some of the highlights you might encounter when brushing up on your Chinese legends and history—figures who perhaps warrant their own feature film adaptation…

Xun Guan

At thirteen, Xun Guan was already an accomplished martial artist and tactician. Her father, Xun Song, was the governor of Xianyang in the late 200s A.D. One night, when the castle was under siege, Xun Song was ready to lead a force against the opposing soldiers. Convinced that her father leaving the castle would be bad for morale, she proposed that instead she lead a group of elite soldiers out to defeat the enemy. Even though she was only thirteen, Xun Gun had her father’s trust, and he sent her out. Once outside the walls, Xun Guan immediately spotted a weak spot in the enemy’s position, and she and her troops were triumphant against them, successfully allowing the castle to hold out until more reinforcements could arrive.

Pingyang

During much of Pingyang’s lifetime in the early 600s, the emperor, Yangdi, was incompetent, greedy, and vain—he’s become a villain of Chinese history. Pingyang was the daughter of military commander Li Yuan, and became the wife of Chai Shao, the leader of Yangdi’s palace guard. Yangdi decided that Li Yuan was just too good at his job, so he trumped up false charges and had Li Yuan arrested, only to realize that Li Yuan was the only person who could protect Yangdi from people who actually were plotting against him. Yangdi released Li Yuan, but the damage was done: now Li Yuan wanted Yangdi dead, as well. As Li Yuan rebelled, Chai Shao and Pingyang had to decide how both of them could safely support her father; Chai Shao left first to openly join Li Yuan’s rebellion, and Pingyang later escaped on her own, braving the danger because she was confident she could hide in plain sight.

She journeyed back to her family’s lands and threw open the larders, endearing the people to her and recruiting the first members of what would become known as the Army of the Lady, or the Woman’s Army. As the war continued, Pingyang made alliances and built an army 70,000 strong, keeping them all under a strict code of conduct the prohibited looting, raping, and pillaging. Where the army went, they brought food with them to feed the locals, so they were greeted as liberators. Yangdi dismissed Pingyang as a threat (she was just a woman, after all!), until it was far too late; her forces were unhindered by Yangdi’s troops, and they joined up with Li Yuan and Chai Shao for the final attack on the capital—and, in their victory, the establishment of the Tang Dynasty.

Wu Zetian

In the late 600s, China had a woman emperor. Depending on which historical records you read (the sources tend to be very biased against or very biased toward the empress), she lied, cheated, and murdered her way to the throne—and did more of the same to stay there. She started her imperial career as the favorite concubine of Emperor Taizong. When he died, she married his son, the new emperor, Gaozong. Some sources imply that a romance was going on long before the old emperor’s death; others suggest she was so good at courtly intrigue that Gaozong kept her by his side and ruled equally with her, relying on her political savvy. After Gaozong’s death, their children were in line for the throne; Wu poisoned the eldest, exiled the second, and had plans to manipulate the third and continue to rule. When that son showed too much backbone (and made too many other courtiers angry), she had him deposed, replaced him with his younger brother, and then eventually deposed that child, too, taking on the mantle of rule for herself. Though her rule as emperor was short, she made a number of state improvements in religion, literature, and education—and some historians credit those changes with still having an influence on modern Chinese scholarship.

Liang Hongyu

Although she started her career as a musician, Liang Hongyu ended up using her instrumental skills for a more military purpose. She is said to have met her husband, military officer Han Shizhong, when she was performing as a singer and drummer for his troop. They married in 1121, and she later fought by his side as the army pushed back an invasion by the Huns. The drumming comes in because, during that era, commands were sent to different units in the military through flags and drum signaling. Her drummed orders (and the strategy she came up with) are credited with leading a group of only 8,000 soldiers to victory against a force of 100,000 Hun warriors.

Qin Liangyu

Fighting against the Manchus was a family experience for Qin Liangyu, who went to war alongside her brothers in the early 1600s. When the Manchus—from beyond the Great Wall—threatened Beijing, Qin Liangyu led troops from Sichuan to defend the capital. But there were also rebel forces within the Ming Dynasty, and Qin Liangyu fought against them as well, alongside her son, Ma Xianglin. There’s not just one story of Qin Liangyu’s successes; she fought so many successful campaigns that the Chongzhen Emperor appointed her Crown Prince’s Guardian and a title equivalent to marquis. When the Ming Dynasty fell during Qin Liangyu’s later years, she remained in control of an area of Sichuan, where she helped settle 100,000.

Wu Mei

Women in martial arts are common enough in modern schools (and modern film), but they’ve been around much longer! In fact, the founder of the famous kung fu style Wing Chun was one of the legendary five elders of Shaolin Martial Arts, was a woman. Buddhist nun Wu Mei (also known as Ng Mui) survived the destruction of the Shaolin Temple of Dengfeng during the Qing Dynasty. The shaolin practitioners had been accused of anti-Qing activities, and the army went to destroy them for it. In the bloody battle that followed, only the five known as the five elders survived. They’re credited with spreading martial arts across China, and Wu was said to have invented some of the most important styles. Her Wing Chun is possibly the best known of these, named after Wu’s first student—also a woman—Yim Wing Chun.

Ching Shih

In the early 1800s, when the Golden Age of piracy had already faded in the Caribbean, a pirate queen was sailing her fleet, commanding as many as 80,000 outlaws (sources differ), in the South China Sea. History has forgotten her birth name—Ching Shih translates to “widow of Ching”—but not her amazing deeds, which have put her down in the history books as one of the most successful pirates in history. Ching Shih worked as a prostitute until she married the notorious pirate Cheng I (who was reportedly impressed with her shrewd business sense), who had united different factions of pirates into his Red Flag Fleet.

Legends say that she required half the fleet to belong to her as a condition of the marriage, and when Cheng I died six years later, she took control of the entire fleet. She kept order by enforcing a strict pirate code, and though the Qing dynasty officials, Portuguese Navy, and the East India Company all tried to defeat the fleet, she ruled the waves, only ending her piratical activities when she was offered amnesty from the Chinese government. She lived until she was 69, and she’s the inspiration behind Mistress Ching, one of the Pirate Lords in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

Yu Shu Lien and Jen Yu

These two are completely fictional, but as far as pop culture goes, these women warriors cannot be left out. In the film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Jen Yu (played by Zhang Ziyi) is a teenager and an amazing martial artist who has been secretly trained by the villainous Jade Fox, under the nose of Jen’s father, the governor. Yu Shu Lien (played by Michelle Yoeh) owns and runs a private security company; she’s close friends with Li Mu Bai, and she agrees to go with him to take his sword, the Green Destiny, as a gift to a benefactor. When the Green Destiny is stolen, they track it to Governor Yu’s mansion. Eventually, Jen Yu is discovered as the thief, but her youth and talent make both Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien sympathetic to her, even after they realize she’s been taught by Li Mu Bai’s enemy, Jade Fox. Later in the film, Yu Shu Lien tries to teach Jen Yu a lesson, and the two have one of the best choreographed multi-weapon epic martial arts movie fights in the history of martial arts movies.

Aero

Another fictional Chinese hero is Aero, Marvel’s manhua series star. When she’s not being a superhero, Lei Ling is an architect in Beijing. When the monsters start coming, however, she takes to the sky as Aero, the protector of her city. Using powers of manipulating winds and air currents, she struggles with the destruction caused by supervillains, because her passion is for building and creating, not for seeing things torn down. The character was first introduced in the Agents of Atlas comic, but she started starring in her own ongoing comic series in 2019. It’s too much to hope that we’ll get a hint of her in the MCU’s upcoming Shang Chi, but the ongoing series, written by Zhou Liefen with stories by Alyssa Wong and Greg Pak, and art by Keng and Pop Mhan, is definitely worth picking up.

Honorable Mention: Cassandra Cain

I didn’t know this when I watched Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), but Cassandra Cain—the thief kid who swallows the film’s macguffin—has a long and awesome history in DC comics. She’s a first generation Chinese American; her mother, Lady Shiva, is a dangerous assassin who fled from her village, and her father, David Cain, is one of Ra’s al Ghul’s henchmen. It’s not a love match—he blackmails her into having his child, and then he raises Cassandra to be the perfect assassin and bodyguard. But when she was just eight years old, her empathy made her reject a path of killing, and she ends up in Gotham, where she saves Commissioner Gordon’s life and becomes Batgirl. In fact, Cassandra Cain was the first Batgirl to have her own standalone series run (in 2000). Eventually, after a series of twists and turns, she takes a gig working as one of the global team of Batmen as the Black Bat, where she fights crime in Hong Kong. It’s hard to imagine the Birds of Prey version matching up, but I’d love to see that character in more DC movies!

Mulan premieres on Disney+ on September 4th. Find out how and when you can access it here.

The post Mulan And The Chinese Women Warriors of History and Legend appeared first on Den of Geek.

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yeonchi · 5 years ago

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2019 In Review

This year marked the start (or rather, a continuation) of my transition into society. It kind of sounds weird when I put it that way, but the truth is that I have much to learn about how society works and that despite all my time on the Internet, I’m gonna have to face up to reality sooner or later. I’ve never really created a name for myself outside of my anime posts, English dub rants, or even my work on preserving the Sea Princesses series, but I still hope to continue posting online at times.

Where previous reviews were released on New Year’s Eve, this year’s review will be released a bit earlier for reasons that I’ll elaborate on in this post. Let’s begin after the break.

Sea Princesses

2019 has been a big year for Sea Princesses. During the first half of the year, I worked on transcribing the episodes and writing plot details for the wiki, since not a lot of work was put into them since the other admin, Liggliluff, joined the wiki in 2015 and gave provision for them. In the second half of the year, I renovated the character pages, adding infoboxes and story involvement (highlights for the major characters) to them. I also created pages for the (named) animals that appeared in the series. Since the wiki is pretty much complete at this point with the addition of transcripts and episode plots, any further work on the wiki from me (in regards to the animated series) is up to whether I feel like doing any.

After six months of seeing no further uploads on the Mr Bean and Friends channel, I caved and decided to shell out some money on a premium account to download the Amazon Prime episodes someone had uploaded to a website. Six months after that, I found that someone had downloaded the episodes themselves and uploaded them to KimCartoon. I know this was way after everything I had done, but better late than never, I suppose. The sad thing was that a few weeks after that, someone reached out to me on the Lost Media Archive saying that they had ripped some of the episodes from ABC iView and put a link to their MEGA folder on 4chan /trash/ and not /co/, which led to me not realising it until he told me about it. Regardless, the split English episodes and Spanish Disney Channel raws are still in my cloud drive folder.

While working on the transcripts for the wiki, I also wrote a review of the series. After watching it, I found that there were quite a few disappointments here and there, but the series wasn’t as bad as I had remembered it. Also, from July to October this year, artist Princess Rainbow Channel did some amazing fanart of each character in the series (including background characters) that trumps everything I had seen before and possibly after. Feel free to check it out here along with my reaction and her response.

Public opinion of the series depends on where you are; in Brazil, people are still bringing it up in their childhood memories on Twitter (usually in response to the question “what were some cartoons you remember from when you were young”), while in Australia, you barely get anyone talking about the series and even if you did, quite a few of them would be people trashing it. I’d seen a couple of Americans who had apparently seen the series as well; aside from the Latin American Spanish version, I have no idea which channel the English version was broadcast or where, otherwise I’d have known by now.

So like I said, the wiki is pretty much complete in terms of the TV series. As for the Princesas do Mar books, I am hoping to cover them in the long term when I have the money and capacity to do so. If you want information about them now, then I’m hoping that someone (mostly from Brazil) will be kind enough to provide transcripts and/or snapshots of them. There won’t be anything about the books on the wiki (with the exception of Marcela and the titles of the books) until I get that information, whether it be from a kind volunteer or by myself, so the entire thing’s pretty much on hold until then.

One thing I realised - the author, Fabio Yabu, recently published the first volume of the Combo Rangers graphic novel for free on WEBTOON. No doubt about it, Sea Princesses would have been more popular if it had received as much love as Combo Rangers. Maybe it’s time that Yabu showed some love to the series after nearly a decade since the last Princesas do Mar book published by Panda Books - I wouldn’t mind seeing rereleases, a graphic novel, ebooks or a compendium of the ten books published by Panda Books (those are the titles that I’m hoping to focus on for the wiki, everything else is irrelevant). With my current situation right now, if I can’t get transcripts or screenshots, then I’d be more happy to spend my money buying ebooks than printed books from Brazil.

Doctor Who

Right at the start of the month, the release date for Doctor Who Series 12 was announced to be on New Year’s Day with subsequent episodes to air on Sundays. Like with Series 11, I’ll be continuing the Thirteenth Doctor reviews after the episode airs. The prelude post will come out later with more details. In fact, it’s because of this that I decided to release this post earlier instead of on New Year’s Eve. That’s pretty much the only reason.

English Dubbed Game News and English dub rants

In case you guys missed it, I’m fully moving on from talking about English dubbed games. I don’t know if anyone ever saw this coming since the end of the feud a couple of years back, but I guess my promise to stand tall back at the end of 2017 must sound ironic now.

As I explained back in September, I’ve lost interest in video games altogether and had conflicting thoughts on how to deal with the occasional toxic comments on my pages. I didn’t mention this back then, but in case you were wondering, no, all the Vic Mignogna stuff did not play a factor in my decision. I’ve never been a fan of him so I don’t care and to be fair, innocent or guilty, he is really only one voice actor. In terms of Koei Tecmo games, he only voiced two characters in Dynasty Warriors 7 and 8 (Jia Xu/Xiahou Ba) along with two characters in Samurai Warriors 3 (Mitsuhide Akechi/Yoshimoto Imagawa), which, I should remind you, never made it onto a Warriors Orochi game. If Koei Tecmo wanted to replace him when the allegations came out, they would have done it already. Ironically however, they did just that with Dynasty Warriors 9, but with the whole cast because of the voice actor strike.

Speaking of the voice actor strike, I’ve noticed something that I never did back when I was writing the rants; a lot of voice actors are part of SAG-AFTRA and I’ve deduced that Japanese game companies are being cheap and cutting corners in localisation (specifically, dubbing) because they don’t want to hire union actors because of the cost (presumably). Additionally, I’ve also read that union actors can’t openly do non-union work, which leads to them being uncredited officially. I know I’ve supported the union during the voice actor strike, but I can’t help but think that I should have criticised them at some point during my rants because their rules for union actors kind of play a factor in this whole debacle of video game dubbing.

I’ve suggested crowdfunding as a way to raise funds to hire (union) voice actors, but in recent years, I’ve seen them go the way of Western game companies and put out season passes and neverending DLC packs. Anyone who defends game companies for being cheap and not dubbing their games has no right to complain about them being greedy in other areas. I kind of saw it coming myself, which didn’t come as a surprise to me. As far as I’ve heard, there aren’t any loot boxes or pay-to-win gimmicks in Japanese games, so I guess I’m still relieved.

As for my opinion on all of this or Japanese game companies, including Koei Tecmo, they haven’t changed much, although I’ve become more and more apathetic towards them given my declining interest in video games. Much as I hate to admit, I’ve gotten back into playing older Warriors games I still have for nostalgia and because I was bored and wanted to procrastinate. This shows that regardless of my thoughts, I’m still grateful towards Koei Tecmo for the games that inspired me in certain aspects of my life.

I’m going to burn a few bridges here and say some fuck yous to a few groups. First of all is a big fuck you to the haters, namely the dub haters, sub purists and opinion-neutrals (that much is obvious). Next up is a fuck you to Japanese game companies for being cheap in localisation (and by extension, even cheaper in DLCs), then a smaller, belated and ironic fuck you to voice actor unions like SAG-AFTRA for making the rules that lead to Japanese game companies being cheap in the first place and enabling them to keep doing it. Finally, a really ironic fuck you goes to my fans and all other fans of English dubbing - the fact that nobody else had made something like EDGN by this point, let alone before I found and joined the page, is really telling of what little you do to promote dub advocacy, let alone not being aware that things like said page or #NoDubNoBuy exist or supporting them by liking or sharing my posts.

Anyway, the current plan is to finish posting whatever games I’ve got in the backlog before New Year’s Eve and then unpublish the page sometime after. I’m not going to delete the page out of respect to its creator, who despite still being an admin on the page, has never posted anything since I joined it. The games list will be kept up through this link for reference. Despite the fuck you I just gave my fans (particularly the 230-so followers on EDGN), I want to thank everyone for the support you gave over the years and invite you to continue following me on my Facebook and Tumblr pages.

The state of social media

I felt that I should address something given YouTube’s new measures regarding COPPA, not forgetting that they literally said that they have no obligation to host content. At the start of last year’s review, I stated that there was always something that managed to affect my Internet life in stupid ways. I haven’t been affected directly this year, but YouTube’s measures have led me to think about what would happen if Facebook were to follow suit, particularly because Tumblr already banned NSFW content at the end of last year and Twitter looks like it’s about to follow suit themselves.

Sure enough, YouTube suddenly updated their harassment policy, which resulted in the Leafy Content Cop being removed as a result of retroactive enforcement. I’ve got nothing much to say about this except that it just proves what we’ve been suspecting all along. To be honest, around the time of the NSFW ban on Tumblr, I was kind of expecting that the parody I did would get flagged ironically, but I guess it never got near the radar, not that there would be any justifiable grounds for it.

Anyone who celebrates censorship or deplatforming with the same argument that “private companies can do whatever they want” should really look at themselves in the mirror because if any of this has proved anything, it’s that anyone can be censored or deplatformed with or without reason whether they’re following the rules or not. You’re all just sitting ducks and you don’t even know it even though you play by their rules in the hope that you won’t be next.

On a more lighter note, I wonder if I should use paragraph gaps instead of horizontal rules in future posts, given that Tumblr removed functionality for the latter in the rich text editor. Sure, I could manually add them in the HTML editor, but it would mean that they would disappear when I switched back to the rich text editor, regardless of whether I saved or not, and it would absolutely kill me to put them back in the exact same spots when I’ve changed something there.

In regards to Hong Kong

Back in August, I made a post about how I nearly got deplatformed from Facebook by the guy behind the feud because of what I said in my repostings of Hong Kong news. I really want to look back and laugh at it now not only because him doing so made him look like a pro-Beijing supporter, but because a pro-Beijing politician he scapegoated as a dub hater in a parody post to evade my criticism of him as such lost his seat in the district council to a pro-democracy newcomer.

In that post, I admitted that I did use some racial slurs in some of my repostings. Given the escalating violence (on both sides, police and protesters) since the start of the protests in June, I’m just gonna come right out and say it - if I could use one word to describe it and the negative reaction from those against the protesters (around the world), it would be the hard-r n-word. I used that word against said pro-Beijing politician because like many other people, I don’t think he’s a good person in any way. He’s advocated violence against pro-democracy supporters, has suspected links to the triads and commended old men in white shirts attacking people in black shirts at a train station following a protest some distance away. If that third thing doesn’t remind you of white (shirt) supremacy, then I don’t know what will. Let’s not forget that at the time, I reposted some news about him not being admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales, making him a “fake lawyer n-word”.

In case there are people who disagree with my (former) use of the slur, I want to acknowledge something here. I know I’m using the slur towards Chinese people instead of its historical target, namely people of African origin, but if it helps move the focus away from the latter, then so be it. If I could find another (preferably stronger) word to describe it, then I would, but at this point, I should be lucky that I’m able to control my anger and not use the actual word itself. If you don’t like how I used the n-word at all, then fuck you, you missed the point, but of course, you’re free to leave.

I don’t want to talk about the finer details or criticisms of any party involved in the protests, but I’m quite amazed with the pro-democracy protesters’ motto of not splitting their movement, not condemning the violence from the radical side and not ratting anyone out. In my interpretation, the radical protesters know that their so-called “violence” is illegal, but the other protesters can’t condemn them because words have barely had any effect on the government and they know that the radical protesters are the only people who have a chance of making the government cave into their demands or expose the true sides of Hong Kong and China’s governments to the international community, because their failure to do so five years ago was because they failed to keep their movement together. I probably don’t know as much about this compared to Hong Kong locals or immigrants, but I wager that at least some of my interpretation is spot on.

Two years ago, I said on my personal Facebook page, “I hope that the future of Hong Kong and its politics will improve for the benefit of the people, especially the younger generations, given everything that has happened up to now”. I know it may seem ironic right now, but I believe that the future will continue to improve for the better, but if it turns to the worst, then I hope that due justice may be served.

At the start of this post, I said that I was undergoing a transition into society. I’ll be finishing my university course and graduating at the end of next year, so at this point, I’m currently out looking for work. A lot of people make it look easy, but in truth, it’s been quite excruciating for me; because of some government benefit thing I signed up for, I have a quota of job applications that I need to send per month. It sounds easy, but after a while, it becomes so hard when you look at a job you think you’ll like and realise that you don’t have the necessary skills or experience for it. All I can say for myself is that I’ll keep praying for guidance and hope that I can find something that fits with my timetable, at least until I graduate.

See you all on the other side in 2020.

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the-evil-twin · 8 years ago

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The Legendary Warrior that Inspired Disney's Mulan Is Pretty Badass [x] (By Kristin Lai) (with some excerpt from Disneyfied)

We all know the story of Disney's 1998 animated classic, Mulan. Girl goes to war in place of her father, overcomes adversity, kicks ass, takes names, becomes a hero and falls in love. It's a beautiful tale, and a pretty open and shut case.

But did you know that Mulan is rumored to be based on a real person?

The original story of Mulan comes from the Chinese tale the Ballad of Mulan. While the real-life Mulan was speculated to have lived during the Northern Wei dynasty (386CE – 536CE), her story was first transcribed in the 6th century. Although the poem is great in itself, it's also pretty short and lacking in detail.

Since Mulan's story has become one of epic and near-mythical proportions, there have been countless retellings and additions to her story. The version we are most familiar with today, and the model for Disney's version, likely stems from Xu Wei's play The Heroine Mulan Joins the Army in Place of her Father (1368 - 1644).

While Disney's version of the young warrior was awesome and empowering for girls everywhere - myself included - the original story of Hua Mulan (by which I mean the play) shows that she was even cooler than Disney let on. 1. She was a highly skilled warrior

Probably the biggest difference between the Disney movie and the Wei version of the tale is that Mulan had to learn to fight. A large portion of the Disney film was spent showing Shang Li teaching Mulan how not to die on the battlefield. How could anyone forget that lovely training montage set to "I'll Make a Man Out of You?"

In the play, Mulan grew up as a tomboy with her father teaching her to fight at a young age. By the time she enlisted in the Chinese army, she already knew martial arts, how to wield a sword, and how to competently use a bow and arrow. Sorry, Shang Li, but maybe she could teach you a thing or two about how to be a man.

2. Her family dynamic was totally different

In the Disney film, Mulan isn't really great at anything when we first meet her. She's deemed undatable by the town matchmaker because she lacks the skills that would make her marriage material. Her family is visibly disappointed by this fact, which causes Mulan to basically hate the person she is and the woman she can't seem to become. Part of the reason why Mulan goes to war in the first place is to prove her worth and redeem herself to her seemingly dishonored family. If she can't make it as a woman, then maybe she can as a man.

In the poem, Mulan is honest with her parents about wanting to go to war. She puts down her womanly duty of weaving, goes out and buys a horse, saddle, and bridle and off she goes! Although her parents are bummed that Mulan will be away fighting in the war, it just seems like the most natural decision for her to go in place of her father or little brother (yes, she has a little brother in the poem as well, not just a dog named "Little Brother"). They're kind of like, "Bye, we'll miss you!", but there's definitely no dramatic scene of her leaving in the dead of night.

She does have some self-doubt at the very end of the play for completely non-war related reasons, but we'll get to that later.

3. She didn't have any sidekicks

Sorry, Disney fans, while we all loved the addition of her sassy horse and "lucky" cricket pals, Mulan didn't have any anthropomorphic animal friends helping her along the way. Sadly, there also isn't a peanut gallery of goofy, spectral ancestors. And as for Mushu, there was no small, red dragon sent by her ancestors for protection and comic relief. Although I doubt that any of this will come as a huge shock to any of you.

This Mulan also has soldier buddies, which are lovingly referred to as “SOLDIERS” throughout the play. They are nothing more than stage hands really, and serve only to lead Mulan to and from the army camp at the beginning and end of the tale. There is no love interest among this motley crew, in fact Mulan is married off to her next-door neighbour as soon as she gets home.

Wei’s play version is more heavily focused on Mulan, and the other characters are only really used to set the scene and represent her actions. The lack of supernatural elements makes the story more realistic, and this was probably the author’s intention – there is nothing particularly special about Mulan, and she could be pretty much anyone going to war.

The Disney film tries to paint a broader picture about life as a soldier, and also introduce western audiences to some aspects of Chinese culture. The fact that her ancestors are involved gives her more of an aura of “the chosen one” and highlights the importance of her actions, in that she is breaking free of her restrictive society.

By this point in the story, both Mulans have shown their figurative balls by becoming lauded soldiers and war heroes. However, their lack of literal balls can’t remain a secret forever.

4. There was no big gender reveal

Just when our movie Mulan is fitting in with her fellow soldiers and everything seems to be going well, she becomes injured and it's revealed that she was a woman the whole time *gasp*!

It's not until she saves the whole damn empire that everyone accepts her for the awesome person she's been the whole time.

In the play, Mulan's only request upon returning from battle was to go home to be with her family. It wasn't until she was home that she voluntarily revealed her gender to her brothers in arms. Actually, nonchalantly is nearer the mark. After the war, she invites her soldier buddies back to her home village, and then disappears into the house to greet her parents and put some slap on. Her soldiers march in after her and happen to notice she is suddenly female.

Instead of baring their swords, shouting about dishonour and threatening to rend her into tiny pieces, they gasp and shout with elation, saying this is the greatest miracle of all time and pretty much slapping each other on the back in wonder. Then they go home.

So, in a play that was actually written in medieval China, and includes misogynistic anachronisms such as foot-binding, the Chinese army are totally okay with the fact that Mulan is a woman by the time it is revealed.

(Jenya's note: It is still an important part of the tale that she had to keep her true gender identity a secret, so it's very possible that the real-life Mulan could have been killed if it had been discovered - especially early on, but the truth is that the reason for her secrecy is never explicitly stated in either the play or the ballad. By the time she reveals the truth in the play, her heroics over the course of a decade have already garnered great respect, which I'd wager would make all the difference in the reception).

5. Mulan was in the army much longer than we thought

How long do you think the war took in the movie? Maybe a year or two? They don't really make it clear, but whatever the timeline, it doesn't even come close to the play and the original ballad - in which Mulan spent 12 YEARS away from home. Believe it or not, Mulan was able to fight in the army for over a decade without anyone ever finding out she was a woman.

Although Disney took a lot of creative liberties with Mulan's story, I think their adaptation of the legend was still fantastic. They found a way to make it resonate with young audiences and empower its viewers. With news that Disney will be making a live-action version of Mulan's story, I hope that they rely less on the success of the animated feature and pull more from Xu Wei's play. This could be the perfect opportunity for Disney to show us a more accurate and badass version of Mulan. Would you rather see a rebooted live-action version of the 1998 Mulan, or one that stays closer to the source material?

P.S. - I highly recommend reading Disneyfied's blog article on the subject for a more in-depth compare / contrast evaluation of Disney’s and Wei's Mulan, it's excellent.

P.P.S. - If you're interested in a live-adaptation of Wei's Mulan, check out the Chinese 2009 film Mulan (here, with English subtitles).

P.P.P.S. - Happy International Women's Day!

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